Three counties where the 2024 election could be hijacked

Former President Donald Trump’s claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen has become a permanent part of the political ecosphere. It’s a lie, of course, invalidated by truth, facts and more than 60 court decisions. There never was a steal of the 2020 election — but there could be a hijacking of the 2024 outcome. 

A hijacking typically involves the planting of operatives to take control of a vehicle. I worry that in 2024 the vehicle will be the hyper-local agencies, boards and commissions responsible for counting and certifying votes. The hijackers will be MAGA Republicans, no matter who the GOP nominee may be.

You don’t have to swallow QAnon ravings to accept the possibility. Just listen to Steve Bannon, who brazenly said on his podcast, “We are taking over all the elections.”

He’s right. The strategy combines brute force and the surgical embedding of zealots who believe in MAGA-math: two plus two equals whatever Trump desires.

A 2021 Brennan Center for Justice report uncovered systematic attacks on both independent and Republican election administrators who had the gall to count votes accurately and honestly. Consider Al Schmidt, a Republican commissioner in Philadelphia. The Brennan report describes him as “A decades-long Republican [who] prided himself on bringing transparency to Philadelphia’s election processes.” About a week before Election Day 2020, someone left an ominous message that he and colleagues were “the reason why we have the Second Amendment.” Death threats followed, including this, to Schmidt’s wife: “ALBERT RINO SCHMIDT WILL BE FATALLY SHOT…HEADS ON SPIKES. TREASONOUS SCHMIDTS.” 

Police arrested two men in Philadelphia after receiving an FBI tip that they were making threats against the facility where ballots were being counted. The men were armed with two loaded semiautomatic Beretta pistols, one semiautomatic AR-15-style rifle and ammunition.

But the attacks, like the one we saw on congressional certification of the 2020 election, might not involve violence. The insurrectionists won’t wear combat helmets, but green eyeshades; they won’t wield flagpole spears, but number-two pencils. You won’t see gut-wrenching attacks on the Capitol but the slow, methodical manipulation of votes in county boards and commissions that, in normal times, were considered … well, we really didn’t consider them, because we didn’t think they mattered.

Here are specific threats to watch in three bellwether states:

Spalding County, Georgia

In 2021, Georgia Republicans appointed Ben Johnson as chairman of the Board of Elections and Voter Registration in Spalding County, 40 miles south of Atlanta. Johnson is a fervent proponent of the false claim that the 2020 elections experienced widespread voter fraud. More than a year after that election, he posted without evidence allegations about “hours upon hours of video-taped ballot harvesting in Georgia, the phantoms all over, the dirty voter rolls, the withholding of subpoenaed materials, the list goes on.” His social media ravings, according to a November 2022 Rolling Stone article, include far-right conspiracy theories about Ukraine, the 2020 elections, voting machines and other election infrastructure. In December 2021, he falsely claimed that a Georgia judge ruled that Dominion software in Georgia was “illegal.” By the way, Johnson runs his own IT firm, Liberty Technology, that conducts maintenance for the county’s computer equipment and has access to data from anyone who uses public servers in Spalding County.

Wayne County, Michigan

In Michigan, after the GOP chair of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers was ousted for refusing to block the certification of Joe Biden, local Republicans replaced her with Robert Boyd. Boyd has called the results of the 2020 presidential election “inaccurate” and has said he wouldn’t have approved the county results. He also declined to say if he would certify the 2024 election results. Boyd also believes that BLM protesters and antifa were responsible for the Jan. 6 riot in Washington. Wayne is Michigan’s most populous county, home to Detroit and 1.8 million residents.

Bradford County, Pennsylvania

“I got good news. Donald Trump did not lose Pennsylvania. He did not lose Pennsylvania!” That’s what Bradford County Commissioner Doug McLinko told a crowd last spring. The election denier also met with Trump to discuss “how messed up the voting is.” He’s not alone. A report by Informing Democracy identifies 36 local officials in 22 counties across Pennsylvania who exhibited “anti-democratic” tendencies during the 2022 midterm cycle, and who could pose a similar threat in elections to come. 

Democrats (and supporters of democracy) need to be vigilant. In 2008, my party ran up the score in national elections, while virtually ignoring GOP operations to sweep state and local races. Two years later, Republicans added six new governors, 700 state legislators, and took control of 20 state legislatures, closing their grip on redistricting. We aimed for the sky, and Republicans beat us on the ground.

Now we have to go even deeper. Hijackings work when no one is looking. We can’t ignore the once-banal functions of administering elections in remote towns and counties. It’s unclear whether embedding election administration with zealots will be enough to swing a national election, but Steve Bannon’s declaration should ring in the ears of anyone concerned about democracy: “We are taking over all the elections.” 

Steve Israel represented New York in the U.S. House of Representatives over eight terms and was chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee from 2011 to 2015. He is now director of the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy Institute of Politics and Global Affairs. Follow him on Twitter @RepSteveIsrael.